Yes, but without the crypts, the misdirections are key.  I do feel like tormod's crypt is only becoming a stronger card in CS in this metagame, so I may have to run a tormod's crypt and misD.  Still, I'm glad you have come around to seeing Gifts for what it is in every deck...broken.

I've got one word for you:  Homelands.  wtf cards suck now?

If there is one thing that's missing in white it's win conditions, but I always thought that was because development didn't want white to have a fast win.  It's white, man!  That just implicitly forces white decks to utilize another color to win fast in vintage, or control the game.  Nothing wrong with that...  Now if you're talking bombs like balance and swords to plowshares...I do think white's gotten the shaft in terms of playable instants and sorceries for vintage.

The best way to use an engine like this is in the fashion of bomberman.  The reliance on time walk is not a hard win, but it could become one with the inclusion of a few 2/2 and 2/1 beaters, or even a pumpable beater over a few turns.  I'd say the eternal witness combo fits this strategy quite nicely, and another acceptable direction would be towards a combo deck like the scepter-chant lock decks of non-vintage (hello, panoptic mirror)  The issue you'll have to grapple with, and which will likely symey you for at least a few weeks, is how to get the clock running so you can effectively win on turn 2 without protection and turn 3 with protection.  Even the deck posted is far inferior to a combo deck such as grim long, and the fact that your deck is also hosed by arcane lab and chalice of the void doesn't give it any advantages.  One other note: blue decks have exactly one way to answer the board: bounce it back to the opponent's hand.  Green decks have far more versatile answers, so a blue/green control deck should inherently want to utilize those answers or at least play a few bounce.  I would think echoing truth and chain of vapor comboing with eternal witnesses would be a great place to start.

LOSE the game...you LOSE the game when ancestral gets misdirected.  When you have a black lotus matched up against chalice or null rod it's just a dead card, the same as if you had to mulligan one more time.  If you look back in the thread I make an analogy to animate on worldgorger and state how that would be a far more appropriate comparison than something like tormod's crypt.  Well, black lotus is a 0 cost artifact that gets shut down by null rod the same way, and it's similarly a bad comparison.  There's a big difference between dead cards and unplayable cards...dead cards are questionable, unplayable cards are just plain terrible to have sitting in your deck.

Diopter, you beat me to it.

Yes, and I immediately replied that your list has no board answers (not even echoing truth) so basically you're running suicide slaver with blue and red and splashed black (1 underground sea).  Your list is missing key parts of the control slaver plan, so there isn't any critique that I can give other than do something about that board or you're going to lose with this list, and fix the terrible mana base.

Both of these arguments are intrenched in statistics, while we are asking a design question.  We aren't talking about a benefit of a card, we are talking about a drawback severe enough to cost you a game.  I believe you accept that restricted play of ancestral recall reduces its power, but the best analogy here is probably to a riskier play such as an unprotected animate dead in dragon when your opponent has blue mana open.  If you cannot expect to win in a timely fashion, you may choose to risk your entire board for a win.  The difference between ancestral and animate on a dragon is that you're risking to win the game, and you have a tremendous support mechanism in place for the play in dragon...and it still loses the game a lot.

Because we accept the reduced power of ancestral recall, it is more the uniqueness of what ancestral recall offers to stax that we lose.  This isn't a win, this 3 cards with no guarantees.  By following the statistics, we're pinpointing the threshold of where ancestral becomes suboptimal, and with distribution we can easily concoct metagames with optimal scenarios of a maindecked, a sideboarded ,and a completely excluded ancestral recall.  I believed that the issue was not how to gauge a metagame, however, but how to beat a misdirection-infested metagame.  With pitch long and gifts, it's not hard to believe the current metagame fits into the completely excluded ancestral scenario, but justifying it's inclusion in the sideboard is difficult even with this assumption.  Perhaps it is a bias actually being located inside of the misdirection-infested metagame, but that opinion on the matter is precisely the insight that I can bring to the argument.  I have no knowledge of the other two metagames currently because my metagame is infested beyond my comprehension with misdirection and it actually causes me to change my deck's fundamental strategy.  When a stax player says to me that it causes his deck to change it's strategy by excluding a single card, this seems more than reasonable, it seems like stax is simply following suit.  Because stax does not routinely employ a protection engine for ancestral, it chooses to protect that play by either placing the card in the sideboard or foregoing that strategy altogether because of metagame concerns.  It is a fundamental choice to not play cards that will, under certain circumstances, immediately cause you to lose the game when played.  This can be likened to a control player's choice to maindeck tormod's crypt, except that tormod's crypt doesn't under any circumstances lose the game for you.  It is a metagame choice to take a calculated risk, but our risk has a downside that is too great to ignore, and in fact dominates the upside in a majority of the matches in my metagame.  I understand that there is some measure of a metagame, and that your specific metagame may not call for this extraordinary measure to control gifts and pitch long.  I believe the topic of this thread was much more focused on that specific circumstance of a misdirection infested metagame, and a fundamental choice of my version of stax is to not play cards that will either lose you the game or be dead in that environment.  It's a whole different ballpark when we're playing with Oath, Ichorid and Stax mirrors.

Edit:  Yes, dicemanx, your points are valid and I'm not trying to dispute their validity, just providing additional input.  I base my decision on different criteria, providing an additional point of view but not necessarily disputing...anything...becaus e it's a different design view.  Cheers, mate.

I think this deck really only works if you resolve Oath of Druids.  Unfortunately, that really goes against the concept of building a deck around Oath of Druids.  You can't possibly cast oath more consistently than any other Oath of Druids deck.  I forsee a tooth and nail or reanimator mill deck come from the ashes of this deck.  Then again, if you can get stuff in your graveyard why would it not be named Worldgorger Dragon and be adequately protected by a deck of cantrips?  Put the real dragon in your graveyard, or are you scared?

No, the decision is far more rational in a game space.  You're considering conditional probability, while we are considering the impact of one card in 60.  Will this card potentially lose the game in this metagame?  Yes.  Why are you evaluating more statistics?  It's a point with no rebuttal, smells like a won argument to me.

Okay, let's look at your "combo"

Myr Retriever
Ashnod's Altar

What hate do we have that makes this combo suffer:

Null Rod
Any artifact destruction
Chalice of the Void
Sphere of Resistance

What other combos do we have in vintage at our disposal:

Helm of Awakening + Divining Top
Grim Tutor + Black Lotus + Yawgmoth's Will
Merchant Scroll + Ancestral Recall + Gifts Ungiven

  So let's take a second and evaluate how many dead cards we're running in your deck versus other decks.  With the helm combo you run 3 dead cards (helms), with grim tutors the only dead cards are bounce and protection that aren't actually dead so 0, and with merchant scroll again your only dead cards are bounce so 0.  With your combo you have a minimum of 7 dead cards.  So, essentially, we can rip out your 7 card combo and replace it with any of the 3 mentioned combos with absolutely no drawback whatsoever.  Does this mean we're not interested in playing 7 cards that can only be described as dead for the majority of a vintage game?  For the purposes of competitive vintage, the answer is sadly yes.  You haven't even included mishra's workshop to enable a turn 1 win, which still wouldn't allow the deck to be competitive.

The real question remains:  does this deck have the same potential to recover that 5 color stax does?  I'm not saying there isn't additional risk involved with a 5 color manabase, but I definitely see a lot of weakness with the 1 toughness creatures as opposed to karn, duplicant or balance where we immediately utilize the strength of the play.  All of the cards in your build are about either locking, mana denial or future card advantage.  With 5 color we have more active plays like timetwister and wheel that can potentially destroy a well sculpted hand only looking for another turn.  I do enjoy the focus that restricting a manabase always provides stax, but the question of what happens when we don't draw an explosive start with our stax deck, mulligan and again don't get the explosive start what do we do?  Because of the sheer volume of lock and draw power, it seems wrong to simultaneously be so reliant on that early soft lock and also mana denial.  I suppose your saving grace is null rod, arguably the strongest single card in stax after the restriction of trinisphere.  The fact that the strongest opening hand for a lot of circumstances will be confidant, chalice for 0 is really disconcerting to this gameplan.  I'm interested in how you resolve this issue, because giving an opponent an unmolested turn or two with stax is never good and with this deck anything of that sort would be exceptionally bad.  Is the answer that you always mulligan into at least two pieces of soft lockage?

Don't say these things!  *nanananana I can't hear you nananananana*  Seriously, it's okay to say that right now because all of the good titles except for Resistance are not released.  But...I double dog dare you to say that after February.  Fight night is just a port but I still bought it cuz I like beating heads.  Still, punching through my opponent's head and seeing the engine break in fight night is really disconcerting.  I shall refrain from all judgements until I get angels and tekken, however, because we all knew they had poor software dev. except for Resistance and true to their word, Sony put out absolute dog 5h|t for titles aside from it.  Everyone knows the fighting games are going to cap out performance and graphics, so I again reiterate that I'm happy there are any games at all for the playstation 3 right now.  Even if sony has a bunch of morons running the company (come on...blue ray?!?!?! wtF) with the playstation 1 and 2 sony proved their worth as hardware developers and I'll give them at least a few months on this hardware before I say they screwed up royally with the software.  But yes, the titles are worse than pathetic aside from Resistance.  I can't say I'm disappointed in the 30 player online action on Resistance, and that I can actually find games online really easily and it works through my router is key.  I beat marvel ultimate alliances in about two days but was entertained the entire time, so I would wager the AI is friggin' amazing and we just have to wait for the titles.
Thanks for the info about the processors, although I'm not on the project so I don't need to know jack about the PS3.  Word to being a consumer, though.
And Limbo, you do realize that the Wii controller is being ported to the XBox360, right?  Just cuz you love the controller doesn't mean you should get stuck with gamecube graphics and that controller.  But yeah, if I wanted some f'ing games aside from resistance and a port of fight night to play right now I'd definitely have a Wii.

I'm not sure I agree that Gifts would be ideal over something like Grim/Pitch Long or 5cSTAX.  Both decks have far more potent turn 1's, which I find to be extremely important when playing a diverse metagame.  If you're talking "what's the best I can do with r/u/b manabase" then yes...

As for your wrong answers lead to the conclusion that you're playing the wrong deck, in specific matchups that may be true, so on the whole your deck may have certain slots that are misused.  However, there is also a way to metagame CS for a diverse meta.  By including more tutors, increasing the control base and reducing the metagame slots you can reduce the risk of metagaming in CS.  Just because I believe there are 5-6 metagame slots doesn't mean players should utilize more than 2 metagame cards (answers) when a lack of knowledge can place a safe card such as mana leak or chain of vapor into the slot.  This is inherently improving certain matchups and weakening others the same way metagame cards would act, but the cards are never dead in any matchups.

There is no deck in existence that has no weak matchups, almost unwinnable matchups that you cannot hope to beat.  If you would have me believe that Gifts has less than CS, I would come back with the assumption that we don't know the metagame so how can we possibly make that conclusion.  I would never avoid CS because it's strength lies in the chained plays and combos placed into the deck and their synergy.  Gifts relies on one recursive combo with a deck full of enablers and protection, and one specific turn 2 play.  It is easy to win with CS after being jester's capped, and in many cases impossible with Gifts.

The statement "gifts is a deck full of questions" is false.  Gifts doesn't have a deck full of questions, it has two specific questions.  A CS build dedicated to beating a diverse metagame would be far more suitable to wear the cap of "a deck full of questions and answers" than gifts would be to don half of that.  The best description of Gifts I can come up with is "a deck full of recursion with 2 cards that are really friggin' important"  The recursion is very powerful, the protection is maxed for that amount of recursion, and it is extremely consistent.  Silver bullets against Gifts, however, are far more devestating than any single bullet can ever be to CS.  This is likely because many of the questions and answers from CS are the same, beating down with triskelion while shooting welders or utilizing pentavus as an answer instead of question.  It requires careful play with CS to find these answers, wriggle out of jams and beatdown with a welder for the final point of damage.  This forces your opponent to truly outplay you if the decks matchup evenly.  By comparison, playing against gifts with a hate deck or a deck with silver bullets is extraordinarily easy.  You manage to get one of those silver bullets through, and gifts is reduced to either one or no methods for winning the game.  Two bullets through and gifts should really scoop.  Gifts also has a hat on right now that says "metagame to beat the $&#% out of me" so if your argument would state that nobody is metagaming to beat gifts...well that won't fly...

CS is able to win with the same or less mana than gifts, but typically with less protection.  CS runs more ways to win, because it has more synergy than Gifts.  What CS does not do is answer everything, and that means every CS deck constructed has numerous weaknesses and weak matchups and almost unwinnable matchups.  You have really not shown any way to come from this observation to the conclusion that Gifts is stronger in an unpredictable metagame than CS.  Especially at a point when Gifts receives far more metagame attention than CS.

Sorry, I didn't know anyone still ran ubastax with only one color...but clearly I was not talking about monored ubastax dude.  Dissynergy with chalice for 1 is certainly a valid point, but doesn't have to do with the protection that was referenced in the initial post.  Rather, the purpose of the post was to point out that there are control elements other than iteoc that can allow safe play of ancestral recall and also have synergy with the rest of the deck.

I believe the most important reason to not play ancestral would be the misdirection threat, swinging 6 cards away, the important difference being you drop your welder prior to the SoR, trinisphere, ubamask(turn 1), whereas you actually rather cast protection prior to the Ancestral Recall.   This implicitly lowers the power level of ancestral recall...anyway that was the path I wanted to point out.  Given that it's hard enough to fit wheel and other draw7's into ubastax, it's really where ancestral has to be played in workshop to play around misdirection that's being discussed.  I think I'm actually convinced after writing this that ancestral doesn't belong in the maindeck with everyone playing Misdirections.  Hell, I've got two MisD's in my CS build.  Ahh, forget it, I can't find any good reasons in a misdirection-infested environment to play ancestral maindecked when you can't protect it.  I've played too many games ancestral turn 1 has meet force of will, I'm not about to start walking that play into a far worse outcome.  I try, I fail.

Edit:

Sorry you don't understand, but I really don't think my posts are confusing...at all...

Uba Stax would dispute your argument.  I mean, the deck will actually run some protection and draw power...wtf workshop can't protect ancestral?

The mountain plays mainly the artifact hate color, you can't expect to win that matchup.  Stuffy dolls help.

I'd rather leave ancestral in and play uba masks than take ancestral out and get free hate slots.

I snagged a PSIII.  I honestly have no idea how anyone could be disappointed in the system.  Perhaps it's just because my friend at MIT got 6 free ones and he realizes how huge it is to have 8 cell processors beating the living crap out of all graphics operations.  If you're comparing it's normal resolution, yeah it's not so beautiful, but I'm sitting here on a 40" LCD with absolutely no delay in the graphics and I've gotta say...it's friggin' awesome!  On the PS2 I could typically lag out the system in a couple of seconds by overloading the inputs, but so far nothing causes the PS3 to slow down.  What'll be better is when my friend finishes the developer package for the cell engines and then we get that to developers, but that's still at least a year away so I'm really happy they have anything optimized with that engine so far.
As for selling it...let's just hope the stock market keeps doing what it does and I'll pretend I didn't drop $600 on this system...  If I needed money I would definitely sell it, but since I'm looking to get a profit of only $400-$500 on the system it makes more sense to keep it.  Plus all I do is play video games and magic...hey when is magic workstation coming out on the PS3?  ;-}

I feel sad for reading your list, because you have 0 board control answers (Echoing Truth, Pyroclasm, etc)  Your deck will obviously have more draw power, welders and control than a typical Control Slaver list because it scoops to null rod, pithing needle, meddling mage, true believer, and (dare I say it) life.  Saying Control Slaver shouldn't have board control is the equivalent to stating that combo wants to win on turn 3 or later.

As my current build of Control Slaver includes multiple copies of Gifts Ungiven, I'll chime in here.  Control Slaver, as you have stated many times, is a deck that is able to win by inches.  Gifts Ungiven is a deck that explodes, or loses, in the first couple of turns.  While both decks are extremely vulnerable early, Gifts Ungiven ensures the quality of its cards and "it's winning chance" by running mystical scroll, 4 copies of Gifts, more protection, and a stable basic island mana base.  As a result of this, it would appear that Gifts Ungiven has a "stronger early game" than control slaver, while possessing many of the same vulnerabilities.  However, what are the threats that CS can take care of easily that Gifts has issues with?

One, and certainly the most obvious, would be STAX.  Running Rebuild is a simple answer, but there is a very real possibility that the mana development of the gifts deck can be completely destroyed by STAX and this would mean that the STAX deck wins.  CS, quite simply, has more answers.  With more metagame slots open, CS is more adaptable and able to take down specific metagames.  Does this mean that Gifts cannot do the same thing?  Certainly, because CS is attempting to survive the early game with the knowledge that a late game against anything except Gifts/Dragon will be a landslide.  Gifts, against any deck with mana denial, relies solely on it's island mana development and fast wins to get it out of the early game.  It's a very reliable plan, but not adaptable.  Thus, to slaughter I would play CS metagamed, while to have more consistent wins I would play Gifts.

Stating that one deck has a more consistent early game plan against all decks while another has a more versatile, finnicky early game plan that can be unstoppable would be precisely what a comparison between Gifts and CS yields.  Back to the issue of Gifts Ungiven, this consistency versus versatility is precisely why Control Slaver cannot support a full complement of 4 Gifts Ungiven.  Those slots are dedicated to the CS gameplan, to the early answers, and to the metagaming.  To run a full complement of Gifts Ungivens would be suboptimal because CS never, ever wants to be boxed into a single gameplan.  To do this would completely change the way CS is played and reduce the number of metagame slots.

To answer the presence of Gifts in the metagame, I personally advocate the use of Gifts' protection engine (2 Misdirection) in Control Slaver.  While it appears that this is just copying Gifts, in fact it is utilizing two metagame slots to completely undo the entire advantage that Gifts has over CS.  Sure, Gifts might have a pyroblast in the main to swing the advantage back a little, but once the early Ancestral vanishes Gifts vs CS is almost even (riding on top of an early mindslaver activation, as always).  This is because after the initial turns, our Gifts will win with protection just as easy as the Gifts player's Gifts.  That means more win conditions for Control Slaver, at instant speed.  That's a heck of a reason to play Gifts in CS.

First off I'd like to start by mentioning the three commonly played methods to go aggro with creatures in Vintage:

1)  Aether Vial
2)  Goblin Lackey
3)  Goblin Welder (with Bazaar of Baghdad)

Without a mention to these three it's hard to establish a baseline for "how good" a card should be.  All of these alternatives cost exactly 1 (yes that is ONE) mana and play creatures without casting anything, putting them directly in play from your hand or graveyard.

If we go up to the less "aggro" and more combo level of creature power we get

1)  Oath of Druids
2)  Animate Dead

For two mana we can get creatures like Sundering Titan, Worldgorger Dragon, Akroma, Salvagers and SSS.  We are already seeing a trend towards winning the game.

Looking at three mana, we are at the control level of creature power so we level out at:

1)  Thirst for Knowledge (with Goblin Welder)
2)  Tinker
3)  Necromancy

At this level of "free creatures" we now desire flexibility in our engine and the ability to win instantly (with a deck containing Mindslaver for instance) is present simply because we have so much mana available.

So what is my issue with Show and Tell?  Why is it "less strong" than any of the listed cards?  Because we are paying 3 mana for a card, it must be strong enough to warrant the extra mana.  Mana is a very VERY limited resource especially if you play large creatures (also known as dead cards, in vintage)  What I see from Show and Tell is a card with power equivalent to a two-mana costing free creature placement, with the drawback that the creature must be in your hand and that your opponent will get a free permanent drop.  Because you assume you have 3 mana at this point, against mindslaver.dec you face auto-losing.  You will occasionally get the free drop, but it has cost you two cards from your hand, 3 mana and a turn.  That had better be one heck of a creature!  I think we've established that there isn't a good way to salvage show and tell for vintage, outside of a control/disruption shell that would need to completely destroy your opponent's hand prior to casting the card.  The alternative would be running suicide blue...that can't be a real deck...even rogue...

Without seeing where we are in vintage, it's hard to focus on how we can evolve from there.  We have at the lowest mana tiers (Ichorid actually has a 0 mana method for playing creatures) virtually uncounterable creature wins.  This isn't simply aggro, for two mana in vintage we win the game easily with Worldgorger Dragon.  When we advocate a rogue creature deck we typically focus on the disruption capabilities of the creatures, or their ability to combo together to win on an early turn (hello lackey, meddling mage).  Because we desire early disruption we don't care about going around a casting cost of arbitrary size, so we can easily employ aether vial.  Winning on an early turn also requires that we have low casting cost creatures, so why focus on playing them for free?

What I believe you would like is a deck that employs the typical free creature playing methods, but with a different creature base.  By saying you want a new creature playing method you're essentially roping yourself into a less efficient engine with the same creatures.  If you were talking about playing a card other than a creature, it would make a lot more sense.  Let's look back at the card Show and Tell for a moment.

Show and Tell was vastly inferior to our other free creature playing methods, but if we expand our search space outside of creatures we immediately see that the card is playable in vintage.  What card does show and tell combo with?  Dovescape!  Yes, our opponent immediately plays something and it could suck but even if the card played is mindslaver, we haven't lost!  We broke the casting cost for a win condition, not some aggro creature that, with three turns, can possibly win unless your opponent has a DsC in play.  Does this mean that I envision a deck with show and tell dovescape as the win condition?  Hell no, but it's certainly feasible given what we want from the cards.

What is really not feasible is using a completely sub-optimal engine such as elvish piper to play gigantic creatures and beat face.  That event is unique to formats that don't contain one-card win conditions...and vintage is far from that format.  Innovation doesn't always break the mold, and with creatures such as dark confidant, meddling mage, goblin lackey, goblin welder, and worldgorger dragon available playing a creature in vintage is definitely not always about going around the casting cost.

I really think that dread returns is intensely underutilized, however.  For zero mana, it should be winning tournaments, because the construction of a zero mana deck allows for sooooo much disruption and aggro it's not right.  I understand that a large portion of the post is dedicated to the existing engines, but that is because to find something better than what we have, we really have to know how friggin' good what we have is first.

Exactly.  The one thing I have to add to that statement is that beatdown does not have the capability to win on turn 1.  While it is possible to claim that there is "limitless disruption" in fact that is not the case.  All builds of Ichorid take multiple turns to execute their gameplan, and the specific builds you reference in the thread may be faster but are still unable to execute the ninja kills that Dragon and Combo are able to.

Ichorid plays an excellent metagamed 4x leyline of the void...if decks that played AGAINST Ichorid played the same, the matchup would not simply be in the opposing deck's favor, it would be ridiculously in their favor.  Just because you cannot clearly see the metagaming in a deck doesn't mean it isn't present, in force, with a properly metagamed sideboard.  The decks define the format, but the format also defines the decks.  If you truly feel you cannot beat Ichorid without 4 maindecked Leyline of the Void, the solution should be clear.

Your tournament report is amazing, as always.  I absolutely love the reference to a cocky CS player that thinks playing U/W fish is a good matchup.  School 'em, yo.

FYI, to do the serum powder bazaar calculation you should just take it as a sum of probabilities and only track the 8 cards you care about in the equation.  If you care about cabal therapy that makes 12 cards, but it's easier because you only have 3 cards x4, not 12 distinct cards.  I can set up the problem for you, but I won't set it up with cabal therapy because that would take longer to explain:

Probability of the deck crapping out (not finding bazaar) =
1 - sum (i = 1 to 7) Probability of finding a bazaar in an i card hand after mulligans (actually, this is a secondary formula and not the primary summation required)

For the purposes of this problem, we need only one formula for a function with 4 variables:

F(total deck size, number of bazaars left, number of serum powders left, number of cards in the hand) = probability of finding a bazaar in the deck with the condition described, through only mulligans.

For a 7 card hand, the probability of finding a bazaar in a 7 card hand is simply the probability of finding a bazaar in your opening hand + the probability of finding no bazaar and 1 serum powder plus . . . so you can see we have a recursive equation on our hands, something close to the bell shiznizzle if you know some math.

Looking at the easiest case, let's look at
F(32, 4, 0, 7) = probability of finding a bazaar in a 32 card deck with 4 bazaars.  This is simply 1 - 28 choose 7 divided by 32 choose 7 for the initial hand, plus F(25, 4, 0, 6)

Looking at a slightly more difficult case, we look at
F(39, 4, 1, 7) = F(32, 4, 0, 7)*probability of getting a powder but no bazaar + . . .

Sorry I can't finish this right now I've got a lot of work to do.  PM me if you have any questions about this.

With regards to the deck, it looks awesome and emerald charm is tremendous tech.  It would be very rough to get leyline + chalice for 1, I guess every deck has some sort of weakness.  That definitely seems like a minor and hardly exploitable vulnerability, and serum powder looks uber broken in this deck.  Props.

While all of the prices given so far are within a normal range, I really hope people don't think just because that's what a dealer would pay this means that cards are generally available for these prices.  It is nearly impossible to find a near-mint english mana drain for $90-$100, and any dealer would give their arm/leg to procure said drain.  I'd say it is more realistic to state that an english drain in nm quality would fetch $120-$130 on the market right now, and if it was necessary to liquidate an arbitrary number of english drains in near mint you could easily liquidate for $100 each.  There's a relatively large difference between the liquid value and the actual value of a card, and while dealers tend to stick closer to the liquid value, the market perceived value for those cards listed (especially the drain price) can be significantly higher.  Dealers have access to better markets so their prices are lower, and they are also buying the best available deals on the market and not completing collections and such.

Edit:  dudes, I'm not trying to say you can't get cards for cheap.  I know you are dealers and therefore get friggin' ridiculous deals.  I'm trying to say that unless you take some risk like you guys are doing, you need higher price targets.  *sigh*  I know you're giving great advice to aspiring dealers, and I totally respect that.  I also respect how much you can make by trading, and therefore respect the time and dedication it takes to get those prices.  Not everyone can hit your targets safely is the origin of this little post right here.  Personally I would overpay 10% of the card's value if necessary to ensure actual near mint quality, especially from ebay.  An example is

http://cgi.ebay.com/MTG-4x-English-Mana-Drain_W0QQitemZ160048969709QQihZ006QQcategoryZ19115QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item160048969709

that looks like a great deal, but is laden with risk.  You can get for dealers' prices if you take dealers' risks, but that's the caveat and if you don't take that risk then you shouldn't expect those prices.  If I knew those were really mint and real I'd buy them in a heartbeat.  Who wouldn't take 4 MINT mana drains for $90 apiece?

Because there is only one Fact or Fiction, it's unable to be as broken as it would be if unrestricted.  I have no doubt that 4 Fact or Fictions would win more consistently than 4 Gifts Ungivens, my statement was with respect to 4 Gifts Ungiven and 1 Fact or Fiction.  Sorry, I did state that badly.  Maybe I'm just so friggin' disappointed that Kerry made such a blunder and may have cost us the senate I mis-speak every time I make a statement now.  Anyway, so GIfts wins more consistently now because of it's support but fact or fiction would do the same without support, hence Gifts is weaker than FoF hands down.

And yes, meandeck gifts is one of the most effective ways to break Gifts Ungiven, but I would go out on a limb and state that CS breaks Gifts Ungiven as well.  In combo decks there are always a number of support cards that synergize effectively and meandeck gifts is no exception.  Because of this, the drawback of running Gifts instead of Fact or Fiction is nonexistent and can't be weighed in meandeck gifts.  In other decks it is definitely a drawback, however.

Gifts Ungiven is far less worthy of restriction than fact or fiction, and far less deadly in terms of swinging a game.  While Gifts Ungiven does allow you to win more consistently, Fact or Fiction can swing a completely lost game in your favor and there's nothing you can do about it.  The problem with my argument, however, is that I currently run 2 Gifts Ungiven in my CS build and 0 Fact or Fiction.

My answer to this is to state that, if Fact or Fiction were unrestricted, I would run 4 Fact or Fiction and 0 Gifts Ungiven in CS because it's more cards, gets the best of 5 instead of the worst 2 of 4, and the real kicker is that Fact or Fiction requires 0 cards to be sacrificed in a support role.  Gifts Ungiven demands so much of a deck that Fact or Fiction doesn't there is really no comparison.  I would run 4 Fact or Fiction for the simple reason that it would give me more draw power, more win conditions and more consistency.

To address the issue of skill, if you can't figure out how to win against Gifts Ungiven you should lose the match, and next time you should consider running a list with gifts ungiven in it because then you would definitely know how to win against gifts.  Experience and skill are prerequisites to playing the game of magic in a tournament, and the rules are made for the purpose of competitive play.  That means professionals playing professionals, and if they're 12 years old and cannot learn how to play with their $3,000 worth of vintage cards perhaps those players should switch over to block or extended.

Special K's base list is almost identical to the list I T8'd the last SCG with.  The differences are:

Mana
+1 Bloodstained Mire
+2 Island
-1 Volcanic Island
-1 Underground Sea
-1 Library of Alexandria

Creatures/artifacts/spells
+2 Misdirection
+2 Merchant Scroll
+1 Pyroblast
+1 Fire/Ice
-1 Darksteel Colossus
-1 Goblin Charbelcher
-1 Mana Severence
-1 Vampiric Tutor
-1 Rack and Ruin

As you can see, the gameplan employed by this deck is far slower than the gameplan that was requried to T8 in SCG, and the power level of the deck does appear to be reduced.  One thing that is constant between the two lists is the 3 welder 2 gifts setup.  The main problem here is that Gifts doesn't have anything to set up because there's no DsC, no Sev->Belch and no Gifts->3Tutor+Lotus->YawgWill.  I would completely undo the mana base change for NE, and I would be hesitant to say that merchant scroll strengthens the deck enough to cut 3 win conditions from the deck.

Control Slaver has been forced by the metagame to adapt by getting faster and more proactive.  Belcher, DsC, Gifts, and tutors all do that.  Merchant scroll can definitely replace one of the win conditions, however, and for your setup I'd suggest the re-inclusion of Darksteel Colossus and Vampiric Tutor, or Goblin Charbelcher and Mana Severence for Pyroblast and Fire/Ice.  Either way, the list looks at least one win condition short IMHO.

An alternative is to run a crucible strip lock and strengthen the control portion as opposed to the combo portion of CS.  I was 1 game away from T8 the spring SCG that went through boston with a list that ran a crucible strip engine with CS, so I have no right to criticize this gameplan as it is perfectly valid.  My only critique is that I'd rather win.  In vintage, however, that is an extremely important critique.

One other thing, Darksteel Colossus is able to win in the stupidest ways imaginable.  An example would be decking a life player at 5 billion life by recurring DsC discard while slaver locking the guy.  A better example is a turn 1 Tinker->DsC against STAX or Goblins.  Because he's stupid and randomly won games when sideboarded in, DsC is maindecked so that he now...just wins...

While it is correct that Control Slaver will suffer badly from the matchup, running Gifts and focusing on the Gifts-style win with Control Slaver with the sideboard plan gives the best results for me.  Blood Moon is so powerful on the play it's ridiculous...but the flip side is also true.  I try to attack the control game that Oath plays, and because we're trying to beat a less-aggressive Oath build, it's going to be tough but do-able.  That said, I never dedicate more than 2 sideboard slots to Oath and I basically feel unique because out of the CS players I know most dedicate . . . 0 sideboard slots to Oath . . .

The best gameplan for the matchup is to have a cheap win condition that's do-able in your CS build such as severance, belcher or rebuild, burning wish->tendrils.  This way after losing the initial battle over the Oath you can fight a winning battle over a lethal tendrils or belcher.  Plan for this match as if the Oath player WILL resolve Oath of Druids sometime in the matchup and your understanding of the matchup will be correct.  Annul on the play is f'ing amazing against Oath...but because it will only work for half of the post-sideboard matchup and it's oath-specific hate I stick to more powerful oath-specific hate (thanks, bombardment).  I still put in a few rack and ruins for the matchup to prevent getting totally manascrewed by certain Oath builds.

The only reason you don't like Gifts against a Gifts deck is because you aren't resolving it, or you're trying to resolve it once your opponent has a dominant position.  Because you couldn't fight over the early merchant scroll->ancestral you were left in this predicament.  Just try it with 2 misdirections in the maindeck, and you won't find yourself in the losing situation where you have to resolve gifts ungiven without adequate protection.

Trust me, I've been in your predicament before.  I tried everything I could and couldn't beat gifts with the list I linked.  It's the fact that Gifts has that merchant->protection/ancestral that really gives it the edge, so any disruption of that plan is really the best way to fight it.

In a storm/combo meta you should focus on mindslaver; I'd be more inclined to run a 2-mindslaver list with 4 welders and 2-3 maindecked duress in that metagame, which would mean I would probably go for Fact or Fiction over Gifts simply because I'd be losing too many support cards.  The sideboard would also sport 4 Leyline of the Void too...but I'm in America so I don't have to run lists like that.  I can simply use misdirection to even up my game against combo and rely on skill to hopefully swing the match in my favor, while focusing on maindeck strength against Gifts, fast aggro, Dragon, stax and the mirror.

Belcher is better utility in CS because it will take care of the board and fast aggro, it doesn't suck up one+ sideboard slot, and you don't care if it goes to the graveyard or hand.  All of those are bonuses that burning wish doesn't have.  Big bonuses when you don't have recoup and you're playing gifts.  The other configuration of that specific deck has -1 Charbelcher -1 Mana Severance, +1 Tendrils of Agony +1 Rebuild.  They play almost identically but the belcher win requires less colored mana, and as black is a premium in CS I chose belcher.  Just remember to put the 4th Underground Sea in if running ToA+Rebuild.

Mana bases are personal choice, and always a risk.  One thing that is standard in my lists is one basic island.

Belcher won approximately 20% of the games; about the same number that DsC won.  Mindslaver won over 50% of them, and is still the key to the deck.  The secret is that the 20% won by belcher would have been lost if I hadn't been running belcher and severance, and were usually won with either 0 or 1 mana to spare...the tight ones...

Gifts in CS works without scroll, and it works really friggin' well.  It will only get stronger once the misdirections make it into CS.

CS from SCG

I don't have to fix your problems, I'm content just pointing them out.  There are too many blatant problems for any good player to consider trying to fix this deck.  That's all I wanted to point out.  Those concerns are about your plan, card choice can only support a good plan and this deck just doesn't have one.  If I thought this deck needed a few tweaks I would gladly offer them.  Here's a start, but I really don't think it'll help

+4 wasteland
+1 strip mine
+3 aether vial
+2 daze

-1 off-color mox
-1 Mystical Tutor
-1 Enlightened Tutor
-4 Mana Drain
-1 Pithing Needle
-2 City of Brass